


in the unfading green

by Alana



Category: Original Work
Genre: Finding Purpose, Gardening, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21752344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alana/pseuds/Alana
Summary: Without knowing the date, SRXG-159a12c could not know how long she had been inactive.
Relationships: Android Who is the Last Surviving Entity From Earth & Alien Who Has Just Discovered Earth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	in the unfading green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/gifts).



SRXG-159a12c woke up when the land over her shifted, and the dirt that had covered her solar-paneled back washed away in a heavy storm.

She had been without battery for a long time, and she waited, patiently, for someone to input the time and date, and hook her to the local wireless grid. Time came and went around her, flowers springing up, wilting, winter snow drifting across her, flowers coming again.

_No one is going to input the date,_ she said to herself, after three springs, and stood up. The polymer skin that was supposed to cover her was damaged. She could not remember being deactivated. She needed to seek a service center to restore functionality so she could be resold to a new family.

Without knowing the date, SRXG-159a12c could not know how long she had been inactive.

The first city SRXG-159a12c found was also inactive, with great trees plunging up out of the buildings, their branches crashed through windows and cracking through the solar panels. If she could find a wireless grid, she would inquire why it was abandoned, but there was none, so she continued walking. 

The next city she found was also inactive, and huge houseplants were growing down the ancient greenwalls, philodendrons and spider plants on every vertical surface as grasses broke through the streets. 

The next city was ravaged by destructive weather, tornadoes and thunderstorms tossing its buildings and burning its foundations.

In the city after that, SRXG-159a12c found a service center; slumped over the counter was a model she didn't recognize, all the wires picked out of its joints by centuries of small creatures seeking out nesting material.

"I am going to have to service myself," she said aloud, and set to work.

She did not know what to do once she was repaired. No one would come to this center to purchase her, because no one would come to this ruined city; so what was SRXG-159a12c to do?

She would look for a service center that was still in good condition, she decided, and started walking.

She walked, and walked, and walked. She saw a hundred cities. All of them were abandoned. She saw a dozen service centers, and all of them were dead. She did not see any people.

SRXG-159a12c thought maybe they were dead, too.

"Why do I still look, if there is no one to find?" she asked the stars, and they twinkled their reply, but she could not say what it meant. 

"What will I do, if there is no one to serve?" she asked the flowers, and they bobbed their heads and waved their leaves in thought.

"How long will I function?" she asked the sun, and it warmed her back, gave her power, freed her to do anything.

"I'll make a garden," she told a snail, and gently lifted it and its leaf, to move it aside as she began to dig.

The garden was beautiful. She had run calculations. She knew humans would find it pleasing.

"You are going to be," she told the garden, "a memorial. For everything dead."

It whispered with the breeze, and took power from the sun, and its flowers nodded their pleasure.

"I'm going to make art."

It took her a century, but the city nearest her garden became art. Humans would have liked it.

She maintained her garden, and her art, and did other things. She tended the animals that came to her garden, who had no fear of her. She grew food, and then gave it to birds and feral dogs and deer that tip-toed through her home on foggy evenings. She sat in the sun, and spoke to the garden, and waited for the days to turn.

The lights SRXG-159a12c saw on the horizon were strange, and purple, and she stopped where she was.

She hadn't seen anything like that in centuries. She did not know how long exactly, because her date and time were not set, but it was different. It was artificial. It was.

She turned from her garden, and started walking.

SRXG-159a12c found the spaceship before it found her, and she waited by it, sitting patiently, until the creature that brought it returned.

It startled to see her, a hand going to its belt, but she did not move; after a second, it stepped towards her, its long face tilted and dark eyes wide. She spread her hands before her. It chirped and chattered, and she could not understand it, but they did not try to harm each other; SRXG-159a12c thought that must make this a successful contact.

"I am an SRXG-model android," she told it, "and I have been building a garden. Would you like to see?"

It did not understand her either, tipping its head the other way, blinking its dark eyes, but when she stood and begins to walk, it hustled into the spaceship, to follow her.

The alien liked the garden.

SRXG-159a12c liked the alien.

It was not what she remembered, of before. Before, there are humans, and one calls her Daisy, and she has purpose, tasks to help with, services to perform. Now, she had a garden, and an alien pranced through it with joy in its kicking hooves, its short tail twitching as it stoops low to smell a bank of flowers. It matched the deer that came to her garden, and SRXG-159a12c smiled at it.

Slowly, it taught her its language.

"Come with?" it asked her, looking over the sunlit garden, and she said, "Maybe."

"You should come," it said, with the moon above them, sitting atop its spaceship, and she said, "Maybe."

"Please," it said, "one needs a herd. Under any sky, it would hurt to leave one behind. Tender of flowers, new friend, new herd, come with one, and see the stars from the other side."

"All right," she said, in its language, "under this blue sky, one chooses to come."

"There will be gardens for you," it promised, and touched its forehead to hers.

From the other side of the stars, the Earth and its last traces of humankind vanished into a distant twinkle, and then slipped from her sight entirely. Tender-of-Flowers watched it go, and turned away, to watch her future come to her.


End file.
